A couple weeks ago I showed Tre a video that was circulating on the web showing a guy setting a record for the number of watermelons he could smash with his head, because I thought he would find it amusing. But as the guy started smashing his head into one watermelon after another, Tre started getting so upset! He said he hated that guy and got so sad and angry.
“Those watermelons are all getting ruined! Nobody will get to eat them! I don’t want him to come to our town! What if he comes to Trader Joe’s?”
I calmed him down and assured him that nobody would be coming to our local stores and smashing all the watermelons before we could buy them. From his perspective, he must have seen this beautiful table full of one of his very favorite fruits, then out of the blue, destruction! And not understanding the context or the idea of doing strange things to set records, which maybe I don’t quite get either, it was baffling to him.
A while ago Leon taught Tre the chicken butt joke. You ask someone, “guess what?” and they say, “what?” Then you say, “chicken butt! And of course we heard it over and over for a while.
Now he has developed his own way of amusing himself, which I guess is a joke. It goes something like this:
Tre: Guess what?
Me: What?
Tre: Guess what?
And I have to start guessing.
Me:Chicken butt?
Tre: No.
Me: Elephant butt?
Tre: Yes!
Tre: Guess what?
Me: Elephant butt?
Tre: No.
Me: Chicken butt?
Tre: No.
Me: Baby chat?
Tre: Yes!
And he just wants me to guess what thing he’s thinking over and over. It would be very difficult if he weren’t always thinking either chicken butt, elephant butt, or baby chat. And I have no idea where the baby chat thing came from. When he first came up with it, I asked him what that meant. Because it’s not a phrase I use, and it had me thinking of an Indian chickpea dish. But of course he said, wondering why I was so clueless, “It’s talking with a baby!” And so the game goes.
Henry amuses himself by pretending to be a backpack. If I’m sitting down with my back available, instead of against a chair back, he will climb onto my back and sing, “Bapap bapap,” to the tune of the Dora the Explorer backpack song. He will sometimes try to climb over my shoulder into my lap, and he loves it if I will carry him piggy back for a while and sing the song myself. But mostly he just loves to climb up on my back and be a backpack.
They’re all back! Not the expensive and always disappointing off-season ones that have been in the grocery store all winter. The real ones are back at the farmers’ markets! Apricots too! Tre has been asking for peaches all winter, showing me the hard, yellow ones in the grocery store, and I haven’t let him get them. Not that we don’t eat anything flown in from anywhere else, but those peaches are sure to disappoint. So Tre was an excited kid today when we saw the peaches at the market. And this afternoon when I asked him if he was hungry for a snack, instead of asking for a granola bar, sweetened yogurt, or other processed treat, he asked for peaches and strawberries! The u-pick season starts soon at the nearby cherry farms, and Tre has been looking forward to that all year.
And the crazy hot weather has actually been doing something good. There are already some strawberries ripening in our own little strawberry patch. And within a few days, we should actually get to pick and eat them because Leon made this cool cage to keep the squirrels and birds from eating them first!
Did I grow to like plants so much because of all my good memories around plants and gardening, or did I form those memories because I’m just a plant person? I don’t know. But there’s something about certain plants that brings back some of my favorite memories.
Bearded irises always remind me of my paternal grandmother’s yard, where I would sit and feel the cool, flat leaves that grow in that particular fan pattern. Also in Nana’s yard were hens and chicks (echeveria), which struck me as so cute and strange. And somehow her garden was full of roly poly bugs, which we didn’t have many of at home. So my brothers and I would play with them, the way my two boys play with them in our yard now. Nana also had a whole fence covered in fragrant, magenta roses. And she had an apricot tree that produced so many apricots that I got sick of apricots after eating so many one year and didn’t like them for a long time. When Nana got to a certain age my family would go over there and do her gardening, and I remember being able to use the power trimmers to trim the pyracantha, which had me feeling so grown up.
My other grandparents lived a couple streets away from Nana, and we would spend time playing at their house as well. They had a giant cherry tree that was perfect for climbing. The cherries were good too, but you had to watch out for little worms, which grossed me out. Grandma and Grandpa worked hard to keep up a big vegetable garden with rows of peas, squash, carrots, beets, etc. They would produce these giant banana squash that they cut up to share with the members of their big family. I don’t think most of the kids were big fans of eating banana squash, but the garden was helpful to my parents, aunts, and uncles. Instead of pulling the carrots out at the end of the summer, the grandparents would let them stay in the ground and pull them when they were needed. I remember my grandma cutting up giant carrots, at least five inches in diameter, one of which could feed a whole family. But really, at that point they had the taste and texture of musty wood. They also grew gooseberries, which my brothers and I loved picking off the bush.
At my house, my dad was the main gardener, but everyone would help. He loved spring bulbs, and we would order tulips, crocuses, daffodils, and a few other bulbs from the Breck’s catalog and then plant them in the fall. After a snowy Utah winter, it was so exciting to see the little crocuses poke up through the patchy snow so bravely. The bulbs would naturalize beautifully, so we had borders full of gorgeous flowers every spring. In the house we lived in when I was in elementary school, the pathway from the front door went between gardens with ajuga groundcover and then a yucca plant on each side. The ajuga’s purple flowers would attract big, noisy bumblebees, and when the yucca was in bloom it would attract hundreds of big wasps. I loved those plants and thought the yucca was so beautiful, but when both were in bloom I was so scared of going on the path out of the house! The back yard there was bordered with alternating poplar trees, which were so amazingly fast-growing, and lilac bushes with their fragrant purple flowers every spring. The lilacs were full and gorgeous, and though I see a few lilacs out here in California, they always look so scraggly compared to the lilacs in Utah.
I learned a lot about gardening from my parents and grandparents, but it was all turned on its head when I moved to California after college. I was amazed at the variety of flowering and evergreen plants that would grow due to the mild winters. But I also learned that weeds would grow like mad all winter when the winter was mild and wet. And I learned that the soil in our area, a heavy clay, makes life impossible for most non-native plants to thrive, unless you amend it a lot. I’m amazed at how tough the native plants are, being able to tolerate saturated heavy clay in winter and dry hard clay in the summer, when it doesn’t rain for months. Most tulips do not naturalize here without the winter chill, though some daffodils and other bulbs will keep coming back. But I love gardening here, and hope that Tre and Henry will have some happy plant memories from our gardening together.
I loved last week’s Top Chef! The contestants had to cook economical and nutritious meals designed for families. And they were also surprised by getting help from kids in the kitchen.
I did get a little laugh when the host, Padma, told them that they had just $10 to shop for dinner for a family of four, then in the next breath told them they would be shopping at Whole Foods. And yes, I know that they have show sponsors, product placement, and all that, so they had to stick with Whole Foods for the episode. But really, there’s a reason why I’ve heard moms in the area calling it Whole Paycheck. But most of the chefs did pretty well getting balanced meals for the small amount of money anyway. And really, half the reason I can’t seem to get out of Whole Foods without spending a few hundred dollars is more about impulse buys for prepared stuff and high-end ingredients than overall high prices. But do most people have the nerve to be picking individual leaves off bok choy at the checkout stand to lower the bill, and would the checker really be so cool with that if you weren’t on TV?
But that’s not why I loved this week’s show. The chefs made a variety of healthy food with fresh veggies and meat, and the kids liked the food. One girl sampled beets for the first time ever and liked them, and one of the top three dishes included brussels sprouts. I loved that they showed that kids could like food other than corn dogs, macaroni and cheese, and french fries, etc. and without the veggies being pureed and sneakily hidden. My own kids do like beets but won’t touch brussels sprouts. But I prepare the sprouts anyway, partly because I love them, and partly because kids do tend to take a while to warm up to some foods. I don’t try to make the kids eat anything they won’t like, but they will be used to seeing a variety of veggies and other foods.
The losing chef did get some criticism for preparing a curry, but mostly for the curry not tasting good or making a balanced meal. And I do think all those points are valid. His curry was a one-dish meal. If the kids couldn’t stomach curry, there would be nothing else for them to eat. I actually do serve curries now and then for dinner, but I always serve some rice or bread and veggies separately, so that the boys have things to eat if the curry is too spicy for them.
I think I may try some of the recipes from the show this time, which will be the first time, even though I’ve been watching the show since it started.
Well, when you talk about little kids, sooner or later you end up talking about poo. Henry is talking about poo all the time lately. I scoop up the dog’s poo most days, so the kids won’t step in it while playing in the yard. Henry is so eager to help, and points out every poo he can find. At least he has figured out now that while it may seem helpful, actually picking up the poo or touching it will cause me to freak out instead of happily thank him. So he goes around pointing to each one he can find, insistently saying his word for poo, “det det!” over and over again until I scoop it. Then Tre becomes helpful too, immitating Henry’s “det det!” and pointing to each one he can find.
The funny thing to me is that this week Henry asked me to read a book to him that has Winnie the Pooh in it, and then kept pointing at Winnie the Pooh and saying, “det det!” It took me a minute to figure that one out. And now he has started patting his own diaper and saying, “det det!” to get me to change it.
Tre lately has been talking about poo on his own level, calling people “poopy eyes” for shock value. And I have to agree with Leon when he said that the stage of Tre finding it funny to talk about poo is turning out to be less funny than he expected. Maybe he’ll come up with some better bathroom jokes as he gets a little older.
Leon was drinking seltzer water at dinner last night, and Tre started talking about how Daddy likes water with bubbles but Mom does not. Tre said he didn’t like carbonated water either, and Leon was asked if Tre would like milk with bubbles. He said, “maybe I would!” Then he thought some more, “maybe I wouldn’t!” with hands up in a big shrug the way he does. So Leon mixed him a drink of half milk and half seltzer water. Tre drinked a little, and complained that it hurt his lips. Then he complained that it hurt inside him too. Then he said, “it makes me go crazy!” and waved his arms around wildly, making all kinds of silly sounds, gradually calming down after about 30 seconds.
Henry is picking up words right and left now–so cute! And I think about half of his words, and I am figuring that they are words, are animal sounds. You’d think they were the most important things that children must learn, judging by all the children’s books and shows about them. But maybe it’s just that they are fun things for the kids to learn and the sounds are easier to say than a lot of words.
He’ll tell you what the animals say if you ask, and his enthusiasm is so charming.
“What does a sheep say, Henry?”
“Baa baa!!!”
And what cracks us up, “What does a cow say, Henry?”
“Mmmmmm!”
He loves to quack like a duck, “Dak! dak! dak!” And oinking is a quiet noise in his throat.
He has been picking up some other words now, besides the animal sounds and family names. He says “yum, yum, yum,” though really it sounds more like “nom, nom, nom,” and makes us think of lolcats. And he loves to say “banana” so much that I think it’s causing him and Tre to increase their banana consumption. And he says “backpack,” though he has to say it twice and with the tune of the Dora the Explorer song: “bapak, bapak.”
He still uses his signs, and between the signs and new words, he can communicate quite a lot. He has found that the “please” sign is extremely useful.
Tre had his own little words when he first started talking, and our favorites were his words for fruit. Strawberries were “humnum,” blueberries or similar berries were “dimdim,” and cherries were “taem.” (The vowel sound he used for that last one wasn’t something that I would know how to spell.) Leon and I were a little wistful when he stopped using so many of his cute mispronounced words, at the same time as being proud of his learning. At four, he’s long past those baby words, but he does use a few of his own words still. Cymbals are “crash-bams,” and handcuffs are “jail-lockers.”
Oh, one or the other of these boys has been sick with a cold for more than a week, and sick Henry has been waking me up a lot at night the last couple nights…after I exhausted myself over the weekend digging the bamboo barrier trench. So I find myself waking up in the morning already tired and grumpy with everyone and so not ready to hear wining, crying, and Henry’s urgent “eh-eh” (his pseudo-word for wanting something). It’s like the end of the day, when my patience is running thin, but at only 7:00 in the morning. I can hear my tone of voice when I speak to the boys, tense and like what they just did was already the last straw. And of course they react by getting more whiny and irritable themselves.
Also contributing to my mood is the isolation from staying home with the sick kids instead of taking them to play with friends or out on errands, which would get me out of the house.
When I’m tired and grumpy, it’s so easy to slip into the mode of tuning out the kids until they need some urgent action…like they’re beating on each other or getting into something dangerous. Of course they need some attention, so it seems to spur them on to get into urgent situations and yell, yell, yell for me. So I try not to deal with the mood by tuning them out. I do think they need some time when they’re playing on their own and I’m just there should they need me–I don’t think the point of staying at home with them is to be their constant playmate and educational director–but they do need some balance. And it clearly isn’t fun for them to feel like they have to get into trouble to get some attention from me.
So I tried really hard to be engaged with them at least some of the day. And we had our good moments and our not-so-good moments. At least Henry was feeling well enough that we went outside for a while, which is a mood-booster for us all. I didn’t manage to get Henry to have a nap today, with noisy construction going on in the bathroom (the other reason why I haven’t been out much in the last few days), but at least that means he’s now asleep earlier than usual. And Leon is home from work and getting Tre to bed. So I can relax and try to get some rest for tomorrow.
Monday I was outside with Tre and Henry, and I was using the hose to wash the soil off the pavers–the stuff left from my dirt piles from the bamboo trench. There was so much clay from deeper in the trench, and it just sticks to the pavers. You can’t shovel or sweep the last layer away.
Anyway, it made quite a muddy mess. And Tre of course, despite my telling him to stay out of the garden, managed to step in the deepest, muddiest part of the backfilled trench. I hadn’t really compacted the backfill, and the mud made into the gooiest claypit. If you know how wet clay gets, when it’s mixed up instead of being all compacted down, it must be worse than quicksand. He was wearing some absolutely worn-out shoes, which despite being awfully small for him, got stuck in the goo. Already up to his mid-thighs, he then went in with his arms to retrieve the shoes. He managed to get one out, but could not find the other one. I couldn’t get to it either, in the one or two tries that I was willing to give it before taking Henry in for a change of clothes. (He had gotten in the water too and was getting all wet.)
He has been wanting to get it back, but I didn’t let him get back in there while the water was still pooled up. And I think we found the slowest draining spot in the yard! It has drained now, though it’s still muddy, and I poked around a little today to look for the shoe. But man, it must really be down there, and I’m not feeling like digging a big hole to look for a shoe that is so worn out that I was going to throw it away weeks ago anyway.
Is it bad luck to leave an old shoe under your garden? I wonder who is going to end up digging up one size 10 knock-off Vans shoe with flames on the sides.
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